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Mobile Minutes: Facebook leads news traffic; PayPal buys Modest; Viewable mobile ads; Apple Music retention

Anyone who works for a major news website or publisher knows that social referrals?that is, links that are shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter?have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time. Now, according to new numbers from the traffic-analytics service Parse.ly, Facebook is no longer just vying with Google but has overtaken it by a significant amount.

In the months leading up to its split with eBay, PayPal made two significant acquisitions. The first was the $280 million it laid out for payments technology startup Paydiant, while the second came last month in the form of an $890 million all-cash deal for international money transfer company Xoom.

Over the past few months, a growing number of ad buyers have started insisting on purchasing only mobile ads that people can actually see, say media sales executives. The insistence when it comes to mobile ads follows an industrywide push over the past year or so aimed at ensuring that marketers only pay for viewable ads on desktops.
?Read more on The Wall Street Journal

A survey of 5,000 consumers by music industry research company MusicWatch found that 48 percent of Apple Music trial users have bailed on the service. Apple countered Tuesday that the number of defectors is in fact far lower.?
Read more on USA Today